As the Senate Rules Committee gets ready for its Wednesday markup of a
bill ending the Senate’s seven year exemption from prompt, searchable
Internet posting of campaign contributions, news stories and blogs
today warned that the addition of controversial amendments could kill
this long-delayed bill co-sponsored by 31 bipartisan Senators.

Samples of the coverage, from National Journal, Election Law
Listserv, and Roll Call follow:

National Journal
March 26, 2007

RULES OF THE GAME
Senate Disclosure Shuffle
By Eliza Newlin Carney

It's not every day that senators get to vote on a bill that's as simple, sensible and non-controversial as the one
now pending before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

- It would save the federal government hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
- It would polish up the Senate's public image, which remains badly tarnished by recent lobbying scandals.
- It would vastly improve public disclosure, and help voters make better-informed choices on Election Day.

If senators oppose the campaign disclosure bill, they should have the guts to stand up and say so.

Indeed, the bill makes so much sense that it's hard to fathom why it's gone nowhere since its introduction more than
three years ago. Not a single senator has publicly opposed the legislation, and numerous newspapers have endorsed it.
As Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., put it during a recent hearing on the legislation: "This bill is as close to a no-brainer
as you can get in this area."

Yet year after year, senators have found a way to quietly scuttle the disclosure bill.

The bill would force the Senate to give up its arcane, paper-based system for filing campaign finance reports.
This system has been an embarrassment to the Senate since 1995, when House candidates first started filing their
campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission.

Since then, virtually all political players have embraced electronic filing -- except paper-bound senators and
their party committees. Today, House candidates and party committees, presidential candidates, political action
committees and so-called 527 groups all must file their disclosure reports electronically.

Even lobbyists would be forced to file electronic disclosure reports under lobbying reform legislation approved
by the Senate in January. Apparently, senators are more than happy to slap tougher disclosure rules on lobbyists --
even as their own paper campaign finance records remain tardy and incomplete, often hiding the source of their
biggest donations until after Election Day.

Fortunately, some senators may be poised to drag their institution kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Newly installed Rules and Administration chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., held the Senate's first-ever hearing
on the disclosure parity bill on March 14, and her committee is scheduled to mark up the legislation on March 28.
The bill has 30 co-sponsors from both parties.

Witnesses at the recent hearing had plenty to say about what's wrong with the Senate's cumbersome, paper-based
system. For starters, even though most senators now collect their campaign finance data on computers, they still
print out their records and submit them on paper to the Secretary of the Senate. That office then spends up to
two days scanning digital images of these printouts, which are then shipped over to the Federal Election Commission.

The FEC then squanders considerable time and money punching the information back into computers so that it can be
searched electronically. The annual cost to the FEC? About $250,000. The whole process can take up to 30 days, and
often the money flowing into Senate campaigns in the last quarter of an election -- which is usually when the biggest
receipts show up -- isn't accessible to the public until after the race is over.

"There is no effective disclosure if it's not timely," argues Steve Weissman, associate director for policy at the
Campaign Finance Institute, which has toiled tirelessly for electronic disclosure of Senate campaign finance records.

"It's just incredible to believe that they've gone for seven years now, and have refused to disclose in a timely
way the sources of their contributions," Weissman adds.

Even more incredibly, this long overdue disclosure bill may still face hurdles in Feinstein's committee next week.
There's talk that Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, the Rules and Administration's ranking Republican, is considering
at least one amendment that would drag in the unrelated issue of political party spending.

A Bennett press aide would say only that the senator is considering a number of options. And at the March 14 hearing,
Bennett sounded a conciliatory note. "I do not want to make it a battleground for the more controversial aspects of
campaign finance reform," insisted Bennett. "But I think there are some things that we can do in the spirit of this
bill that are basically non-controversial."

Still, Feinstein is urging her colleagues not to hold the bill hostage over long-running campaign finance battles.
She's pushing for "a clean bill, without amendments," she said at the hearing. If senators oppose the disclosure
bill -- and it's hard to see why any would -- they should have the guts to stand up and say so. To kill the bill
through procedural shenanigans, as has been done so many times before, would only add to the situation's hypocrisy.
Roll Call
March 26, 2007

Disclosure Bill May Take Hit
By Nicole Duran

Just as the Senate Rules and Administration Committee announced Friday
that it would mark up a bill this week requiring Senate candidates to
file their campaign reports to the Federal Election Commission
electronically, the ranking member of the committee began circulating
an amendment that some government watchdog groups are calling a "poison
pill" that will doom the bill.

Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) wants to attach an amendment to the
electronic disclosure bill that would lift the caps on coordinating
spending between party campaign committees and individual campaigns.

Bennett and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say that is
not a controversial idea. Both contend the amendment would shed more
light into the financing of campaigns.

"Sen. Bennett believes this amendment is needed to inject more
transparency and accountability into federal elections," Bennett
spokeswoman Emily Christensen said. "By lifting the coordinated
spending limits, parties and candidates will have to stand behind their
campaign ads. This should be noncontroversial, and the Senator believes
Congress should act now before we get too far into the 2008 election
cycle."

But some government watchdog groups warn that any amendment to the
disclosure measure could scuttle the bill, which is sponsored by Sens.
Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) - just as it is
making its first real progress since Feingold initially introduced it
in 2003.

"A vote for such an amendment would be a vote to assure that, despite
its broad Senate and public support, Senate electronic disclosure will
not come to the Senate floor and will not pass Congress," Michael
Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, wrote
Friday in a letter to all Rules Committee members.

At a March 14 hearing on the legislation, Rules Chairwoman Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.) cautioned against controversial amendments.

"I wanted to build the case for urging my colleagues to refrain from
holding this bill hostage over the campaign finance battles that have
been going on for years," she said.

Feinstein added that "looking at the difficult path that this
legislation has had ... it was important that this committee establish
a legislative record which ... will demonstrate the strong support that
is out there for electronic filing."

The FEC has long supported making Senate candidates file their campaign
finance reports electronically, just as House and presidential
candidates and federal political action committees do.

But McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said the Minority Leader - a
frequent opponent of campaign finance reform measures - supports
Bennett's amendment and does not think it will affect the push to make
Senate candidates file electronically. He said the amendment "makes the
committees accountable for the ads" they pay for through independent
expenditures.

Stewart cited the controversial TV commercial created by the
independent expenditure arm of the Republican National Committee that
ran in Tennessee last cycle, implying that then-Rep. Harold Ford Jr.
(D-Tenn.) was a ladies man.

Even though many civil rights groups and politicians from both
political parties found the ad offensive, Stewart said no one could
yank it from the airwaves because the RNC was not allowed to talk to
the entity that made it.

If Bennett's amendment became law, there would be no need for the party
committees to establish separate, independent groups, he said.

Cochran is not likely to support Bennett's effort.

"Certainly Sen. Cochran, as far as amendments go, wants to make sure
that nothing is added that would hinder the expeditious passage of the
bill," Cochran spokeswoman Margaret Wicker said. "It's been so long in
coming, he just wants to make sure the committee will report it out in
a form that hopefully the Senate would approve by unanimous consent."

Wicker added that Cochran "will defend the bill in its [current] form in the markup."

Cochran, who sits on the committee, and Bennett, the ranking member,
have not spoken yet, Wicker said late Friday. However, Cochran
"certainly will do whatever he thinks is necessary to get the bill
approved," she said.

Currently, they file paper copies with the Secretary of the Senate, who
then must scan all the pages and transmit them to the FEC. The FEC then
has to enter much of the information manually before posting the
reports online.

That causes delays, makes it harder for the public to find or see the reports and is costly.

Feinstein said it costs taxpayers $250,000 annually.

The bill has 30 co-sponsors and no one has spoken against the measure.

Howard Gantman, Feinstein's staff director on the Rules Committee, said
any changes beyond a technical one Cochran and Feingold have signed off
on that would push back the bill's enactment date, could doom it.

"The best way to pass this on the floor would be as a stand-alone
bill," Gantman said. "If Members were successful at getting an
amendment in committee, that would spark a lot of controversy ... that
would virtually kill it."

Some advocates of electronic filing believe that McConnell does not
actually support the idea. They point to his vigorous efforts against
the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and his pursuit of litigation
stemming from that landmark bill.

Others note that Bennett and McConnell are very close.

Stewart dismissed the idea as inaccurate conspiracy theories.

"He does not object to electronic filing," Stewart said. "Sen. McConnell has been a proponent of this fix for some time."

Stewart added that McConnell does not now, nor has he ever had, a hold on the bill.

Supporters of Bennett's amendment have noted that the Campaign Finance Institute supports the amendment.

But Steve Weissman, associate director for policy with the institute, said that is not quite right.

Malbin, the group's executive director, personally supports lifting the
caps but "is opposed to putting it on this bill because he knows that
it would make it controversial and kill it," Weissman said.

The Campaign Finance Institute has issued this press release.
UPDATE: Roll Call confirms ($) that an amendment on lifting coordinated
spending beween parties and candidates will be put in the bill. Whether
one likes that provision or not, it certainly reduces the chances of
the electronic disclosure provision passing. Most disingenuous comment:
"Bennett and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say that
[lifting the caps] is not a controversial idea."